“It is hardly necessary to be told so.”

“They mean to take lodgings somewhere near here this next month, and see what they can do to cheer her in her present life, which must be the greatest possible contrast to her former one.  Do you wish to set out on our expedition before August, Davie?  I should like you to see them.”

“By all means let us wait for them.  Indeed I should not be at liberty till the last week in July.”

“And how go the brains of Kenminster?  You look enlivened since last time I saw you.”

“It is the infusion the brains have received.  That one woman has made more difference to the school than I could have done in ten years.”

“You find her boys, at any rate, pupils worth teaching.”

“More than that.  Of course it is something to have a fellow capable of ideas before one; but besides that, lads who had gone on contentedly at their own level have had to bestir themselves not to be taken down by him.  When he refused to have it forced upon him that study was not the thing at Kenminster, they found the only way to make him know his place was to keep theirs, and some of them have really found the use of their wits, and rejoice in them.  Even in the lower form, the Colonel’s second boy has developed an intellect.  Then the way those boys bring their work prepared has raised the standard!”

“I heard something of that on my way.”

“You did?”

“Yes; two ladies were in full career of talk when the train stopped at the Junction, and I heard-—’I am always obliged to spend one hour every evening seeing that Arthur knows his lessons.  So troublesome you know; but since that Mrs. Joseph Brownlow has come, she helps her boys so with their home-work that the others have not a chance if one does not look to it oneself.’  Then it appeared that she told Mr. Ogilvie it wasn’t fair, and that he would give her no redress.”

“Absurd woman!  It is not a matter of unfairness, as I told her.  They don’t get help in sums or exercises; they only have grammar to learn and construing to prepare, and all my concern is that it should be got up thoroughly.  If their mothers help them, so much the better.”

“The mothers don’t seem to think so.  However, she branched off into incredulity that Mrs. Joe Brownlow could ever really teach her children anything, for she was always tramping all over the country with them at all hours of the day and night.  She has met her herself, with all those boys after her, three miles from home, in a great straw hat, when her husband hadn’t been dead a year.”

“I’m sure she is always in regulation veils, and all the rest of it, at Church, if that’s what you ladies want.”

“But the crown of the misdoings seemed to be that she had been met at some old castle, sacred to picnics, alone with her children—-no party nor anything.  I could not make out whether the offence consisted in making the ruin too cheap, or in caring for it for its own sake, and not as a lion for guests.”